In need of capital to rebuild, Syrian men are staying in neighbouring countries to work while their wives head home
By Melissa Pawson and Mahmoud Abo Rass | –
( OpenDemocracy.net) – Zahra Ziad met her in-laws for the first time when she moved in with them. Ten days after the former president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, was ousted in December last year, she crossed from Turkey into Syria and travelled with her three small children to join her husband’s family. Her husband, Mahmoud al-Khader, saw them off at the border. He promised to join them in a year.
Ziad, 24, and al-Khader, 29, had spent the last nine years living in exile in Turkey. They had long hoped to return to northwest Syria. “Once the regime fell, we knew we had to start planning for the future,” al-Khader said.
But there are few work opportunities in Syria, where the economy and infrastructure have been devastated by 14 years of civil war. Safety is also a concern. Israel has conducted airstrikes across the country in the past months, militias killed hundreds in coastal areas in March, and the new regime is still in the process of consolidating its control.
As a result, the couple decided to phase their return. “Living expenses are much higher in Turkey than in Syria,” said al-Khader, who works as a farm driver in Mersin, a city in southern Turkey. “So my wife and I decided to send her and the children to my parents’ house for a year, while I saved money to build us a house in my hometown.”
Al-Khader and Ziad are not the only ones who have opted for this strategy. Two other families told openDemocracy that the mothers and children had returned to live with family members in refugee camps inside Syria. The fathers stayed behind – one in Turkey, and one in Lebanon – to continue working.
The families all report knowing others who have sent their wives and children home ahead of them. But outside observers say they haven’t noticed this trend on a wider scale. Sara Stachelhaus, programme coordinator for the Beirut office of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, a German think tank, said such stories are unusual.
“We hear more of Syrian men traveling to their hometowns to evaluate the situation while their wives and children remain in Lebanon,” she said. “Many return to Lebanon with stories of destruction to their homes and no access to services.”
Reports from Turkey and Lebanon also suggest that in most cases, men are returning alone to check on the security situation, work opportunities and housing before making a decision for their families.
While in the minority, these families’ stories demonstrate that many are making big moves towards restarting their lives in Syria. They also shed light on an unlikely new migration dynamic unfolding today.
Leaving behind poor treatment
Approximately six million Syrian refugees live outside of Syria. The UN Refugee Agency estimates that, of these, around 400,000 have returned home since December 2024.
Many returnees have travelled from neighbouring countries. Turkey and Lebanon are both allowing “go-and-see” visits, so that individual Syrians can take short trips to assess the situation without endangering their legal status. But the policy does not apply to whole families. This means that the women and children who have gone to Syria in recent months from these countries will be unable to legally return.
Jordan, which hosts over 600,000 Syrian refugees, isn’t running a go-and-see programme. All tickets out are one-way trips, leaving many with a difficult decision to make.
The refugees have not had an easy time abroad – many have spent over a decade living in poverty and limbo. Jordan and Lebanon are not signatories of the 1951 Geneva Convention, and Turkey only applies the convention to refugees from Europe. This means that Syrian refugees are considered ‘guests’ in these three countries, and many have faced significant barriers to accessing services and a more secure legal status.
Omar Kadkoy, programme coordinator at Heinrich Böll Stiftung’s Istanbul office, said Syrians in Turkey have been stuck “between a rock and a hard place” for a long time.
“Before the fall of al-Assad, Syrians faced difficult living conditions in Turkey, and the near impossibility of returning home,” Kadkoy said. “For those who could afford it, attempting to reach Europe has been one of the only ways to escape.”
Racially motivated attacks across Turkey have also shown that Syrians in exile are still at risk. “Syrian refugees have been blamed for a lot of issues here in Turkey, especially since the economic nosedive began in 2018,” said Kadkoy. “Phasing a return in this way could make sense for some families, but members of other Syrian families might want to go individually to assess the situation then return to Turkey.”
I decided to move them so they could live in a safer environment, far from racism and fear
For Hussam Hussein al-Daghim, 33, returning his family to Syria was a safer option than remaining in Lebanon. “We faced racist language in our neighbourhood in Tripoli on a daily basis,” he said, “and we had the near-constant threat of deportation hanging over us.”
Al-Daghim, who works as a stone carver, crossed with his family into Syria 20 days after al-Assad fled. Ten days later, he returned to Lebanon without them to continue working.
While active fighting in Syria has not entirely ceased, al-Daghim said he found the security situation acceptable enough. His old home had been destroyed by shelling during the war, so he took his wife and five children to live with his parents in a concrete structure in a refugee camp in northern Idlib.
The conditions are cramped, but al-Daghim said the camp’s services are acceptable. The family has access to education and medical services, a regular water supply, and electricity from solar panels.
“I decided to move them so they could live in a safer environment, far from racism and fear,” al-Daghim said. “I also wanted to reunite them with the rest of the family after a long absence.”
A difficult compromise
Ziad said she is also feeling the benefits of family support. “It wasn’t easy to decide to return to Syria without my husband, especially since I’d never met his family,” she said. The couple married in opposition territory in Idlib in 2016, after al-Khader fled his home in southern Hama. Al-Khader’s parents remained in Hama, unable to meet their new daughter-in-law – despite being just over an hour’s drive away.
“The situation was better than I expected,” said Ziad of the move back to Syria. “The children miss their father. But they’ve become really attached to their grandparents, who help me a lot with childcare.”
Ziad said she struggles with the lack of basic services. Electricity and water are intermittent, and sometimes available for only a few hours a day. But she feels the family made the right decision.
“Living in a community that understands me and offers fewer services is better than living in a community with services, but no support or integration,” she said. “And the children are speaking more Arabic. They were surrounded by Turkish speakers before.”
Meanwhile, al-Khader, her husband, has moved to a smaller apartment. He said he is now able to save almost half of his $800-a-month salary, which he hopes to put to rebuilding their house next year.
Living conditions and services in Syria are worse than in Turkey, but this doesn’t matter as much as the family being together
openDemocracy spoke to other families that gave similar assessments as Ziad, al-Khader, and al-Daghim. Mohammed Diaa, 31, who travelled with his wife and two children to Syria in late December and returned alone to Turkey two weeks later, also said the compromise has been worth it.
“Living conditions and services in Syria are worse than in Turkey, but this doesn’t matter as much as the family being together,” he said.
Diaa’s wife and children now live with his parents in a small refugee camp outside Qah, a town close to the Turkish border. Despite knowing they’d be going to live in a refugee camp, he said he and his wife made the decision “almost immediately”.
Diaa works in car manufacturing in Kayseri, central Turkey, where he earns around $600 a month. Now that his family is back in Syria, he hopes to reduce his living expenses and save around $200 a month. He plans to send some of this to his wife through money transfer offices, and the rest he will put aside to rebuild their house.
The long road to return
Murat Güray Kirdar, professor of economics at Koç University in Turkey, said these families’ choices make “a lot of economic sense”. Turkey has suffered punishing levels of inflation in recent years, and Turkish-level wages have far greater purchasing power within Syria.
At the same time, he noted that many of the 3.2 million Syrians in Turkey have adapted to life there. Numerous industries, particularly textile, construction and agriculture, have also come to rely on their labour. Combine all that with the situation inside Syria, and the decision to return or not is hardly clear cut.
“The fall of the al-Assad regime does not guarantee safety,” he cautioned. “Large scale return depends on security and economic opportunities [and] must be voluntary and safe”.
It would be a loss to sit back and watch them leave
Kadkoy suggested that, if mass return to Syria is eventually a safe and viable option, then Syrians embedded in Turkey’s informal economy may have some leverage to negotiate formal employment and better working conditions. “For many people, informal work has been the only option – but it’s left the door open to workplace exploitation. Several sectors are heavily dependent on the Syrian workforce, but it feels like they’ve been having their cake and eating it too,” he said.
File. Photo of Idlib, Syria by Ahmed akacha: https://www.pexels.com/photo/three-girls-in-floral-dresses-smiling-and-standing-near-white-tent-6729257/
“There’s a generation of bilingual Syrians who have graduated from the Turkish education system,” Kadkoy added. “They’ve already integrated. It would be a loss to sit back and watch them leave. The government could incentivise their stay, perhaps via a new legal status.”
The International Organisation for Migration has warned against mass returns to Syria, stating that this would “overwhelm” the country. Many who have gone back have found their homes reduced to rubble alongside public infrastructure like hospitals, schools, public buildings and roads. The cost of rebuilding the country will be huge – and will require high levels of cooperation from the international community, much of which (namely the US and EU) still imposes sanctions on the country.
The World Health Organisation is appealing for $56.4m for its health emergency response in Syria, with over half the country’s hospitals out of action. Humanitarian relief will remain at the top of the agenda for the foreseeable future, as 90% of the population is currently living below the poverty line.
The need for aid has been further exacerbated by continuing conflict. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians were displaced back to Syria after Israel launched airstrikes on southern Lebanon in September 2024. And over 6,000 Syrians were then displaced to Lebanon in March after government-affiliated militias committed brutal killings and violence against the Alawite minority.
Most of the displaced will be waiting to see how the interim government handles these risks and challenges. Many will decide not to return at all. Al-Khader reflected that he might have been one of that number, but his ultimate decision to send his family back has now given him a clear path in a different direction.
“Life has been good for me in Turkey,” he said. “I was fortunate enough to get a job that allowed us to live and settle here. But my wife and children struggled to adapt, and it didn’t make sense to stay. Now we can finally plan for the future.”
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